2008-07-16

VB Porting Issues

Dear Lazy-web,

I was hoping that someone out there remembers good old VB4. I have an issue when helping out to port a VB4 system to XP. The thing is that I've got a really old system for managing club members and race results that is used by the local bicycle club. I did not write this system, and I'm helping them for free. Anyhow, it uses VB4 + Crystal Reports 1.x.

Installing these tools on Windows XP works on some machines, but not all. For instance, Swedish XP installations seems to crash Crystal Reports (somewhere in ntdll.dll). Just starting the app, that is.

Does anyone know what is causing this and how to circumvent it? I would be very pleased...

4 Comments:

At 11:32 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The answer is... port it to Qt!
Seriously, what do you expect on a blog syndicated on the KDE planet? :)

 
At 11:56 PM, Blogger Jonas said...

That does ring a bell...I haven't had the need to even look at VB for quite some time but I do remember some similar issues way back...

In one case, it was also an app that refused to work in a Swedish (and a danish) version of XP. In that case, all I had to do was to make sure XP was set up to use the American ways of specifying dates.

Another case was more nasty...the Windows method of using drive-letters really showed its ugly side. The app was hardcoded to use a specific drive-letter (and not documented...) and when something not expected was found there (such as a CD instead of a network drive) crash city came to visit.

I don't remember if I got a bluescreen or not, but I did have to reboot the computer to get out of the situation.

You may also want to check if the app was using a "translated" version of the runtimes. That is, if the program was written using, say, french .dlls it can crash if it finds the swedish ditto. Yes, I know it sounds far-fetched but it has happened to me.

Hope this may be of some use in at least limiting the possible suspects.

 
At 1:07 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Use win xp Compatabilty tool on the Exe.,,,then it will work

 
At 10:43 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Use Gambas!

 

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